This is an old critique that was never posted. But all the hard work put in by both parties here deserves some feedback (even inexpertly like mine). So, here it is:
Interesting tactical problem, to say the least.
Now, please bear with me, because I have zero experience with AToW tactical rules. So, I'm going to go at this from primarily a real-world conceit leavened with BattleTroops rules. That may mean nothing I say is relevant, but...
The AFFS unit is hosed. They are being asked to take a fortified*--or at least held--position with no personnel-overmatch whereupon they will have to literally charge across open ground against not one or two automatic support weapons, but eight. Bloody. Machine. Guns. And once they do get across that open ground, they will have to find a way to gain entry using, one presumes, an open** door or window, since they lack any appreciable means of even blowing a hole in a wall. (And if AToW rules allow APers/fragmentation grenades to blow open doors or mousehole walls, they are even more naff than I imagine at this moment.)
In BattleTroops rules, soldiers in cover and without the need to move can spend their time sitting behind their gunsights with great arcs of fire (trading MP for a specified sector of fire) in which they get to fire at people who blunder into those arc. Think the BT Hidden Units/Point Blank Shots rule. Only you are not in a BattleMech, you are in at best an armored vest, so the results are usually un-pretty.
Again, I don’t know the AToW rules, but I see the AFFS troopers can sprint about 8+ hexes, so they could conceivably get to the target building in two turns flat-out, or in a single dash across a street (which isn’t unreasonable at all—if they couldn’t move seven more hexes past it afterwards!). But then they will be charging into CQB against a better-trained opponent, fighting from cover, armed with damn swords.
How simple is it to get a grenade through a window (or mousehole, better yet)? How do machine-guns fare against lightly-built residential houses? Is there a reaction-fire mechanic in the rules (e.g. can I immediately shoot people running across a road if I am prepared)? Are there rules to shoot from inside a room and not from a window-lintel—and if so, how effective are the snipers going to be? And why give them ghillie suits in a MOUT deliberate attack, other than to slow them down and restrict access to their gear?
Real-world?
As the attacker, I’d have my PLT 2IC reconnoiter the building by visual recon and by drawing fire with a squad-plus, snipe as many careless enemy as I could to attrit them, and identify the weakest point. During this time, I’d be infiltrating in either adjacent building (or, perhaps better, the building south/uphill), set up an SBF and try assaulting from there (and either blow a hole through the shared wall or go over the roof to gain entry to the second floor of the target if the buildings were physically touching).
As the defender (and ignoring fortifying and improving my defensive position**—or assuming I did so), I’d site two guns on the most likely approaches (N/NW and S/SE), one to the less-likely approaches, and keep the rest as a reserve to push out as needed. If I had a lot of time and the buildings were as close as they appear, I’d probably invest the adjacent buildings as well to give me some operational depth.
*If the building does not have even a rudimentary attempt to fortify it, I question the DCMS troopers' sanity or the time they have had to occupy the position. Even if they had an hour, they would have sectors of fire determined, mouseholes at floor-level to fire through, and doors and windows blocked by whatever was in the house to begin with. And if the house was completely empty to begin with--vanishingly unlikely given the overarching situation--interior walls and fittings would be torn apart as grist for the mill.
**I cannot overstate how easy and quick it is to fortify a building—nor how hard it is to get inside one if you lack breaching tools, demolitions, and/or knowhow. I can tell you stories about what I have done and seen done in buildings, from trip wires half way in the middle of a room, triple-strand concertina just inside the front door and up the stairwell, ratholes blown in closets for surreptitious access through a house…Hell, some screening tacked inside the windows would defeat the only chance the AFFS troopers have of success, since their heavy weapons are frags for our purposes here.
But, Daryk and Daemion, like I said at the top, it’s an interesting tactical problem to work through. Great job on all the technical aspects of the scenario (map, especially, and the beautiful and hard work behind the characters and record sheets).
